r
had led me to experiment with a young caribou. We had him on the
Strathcona nearly all one summer. He was a great pet on board, and
demonstrated how easily trained these animals are. He followed me
about like a dog, and called after me as I left the ship's side in a
boat if we did not take him with us. He was as inquisitive as a monkey
or as the black bear which we had had two years before. We twice
caught him in the chart-room chewing up white paper, for on his first
raid there he had found an apple just magnanimously sent us from the
shore as a delicacy.

Friends, inspired by Mr. William Howell Reed, of Boston, collected the
money for a consignment of reindeer, and we accordingly sent to
Lapland to purchase as many of the animals as we could afford. The
expense was not so much in the cost of the deer as in the transport.
They could not be shipped till they had themselves hauled down to the
beach enough moss to feed them on their passage across the Atlantic.
Between two hundred and fifty and three hundred were purchased, and
three Lapp families hired to teach some of our local people how to
herd them. When at last snow enough fell for the sledges to haul the
moss down to the landwash, it was dark all day around the North Cape.

Fifty years hence in all probability the Lapps will be an extinct
race, as even within the past twelve or fifteen years, districts in
which thousands of domesticated reindeer grazed, now possess but a few
hundreds.

The good ship Anita, which conveyed the herd to us, steamed in for
southern Newfoundland and then worked her way North as far as the ice
would permit. At St. Anthony everything was frozen up, and the men
walked out of the harbour mouth on the sea ice to meet the steamer
bringing the deer. The whole three hundred were landed on the ice in
Cremailliere, some three miles to the southward of St. Anthony
Hospital, and though many fell through into the sea, they proved hardy
and resourceful enough to reach the land, where they gathered around
the tinkling bells of the old deer without a single loss from land to
land.

One of our workers at St. Anthony that winter wrote that "the most
exciting moment was when the woman was lowered in her own sledge over
the steamer's side on to the ice, drawn to the shore, and transferred
to one of Dr. Grenfell's komatiks, as she had hurt her leg on the
voyage. The sight of all the strange men surrounding her frightened
her, but she was finally reas